Sunday, February 7, 2010
The end of the blog
This is the end of this blog. I'm going to continue blogging here http://www.thefreshloaf.com/blog/cpc because it's more of a community thing.
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Two bakes today
Today I baked two breads.
First up, whole wheat pain a l'ancienne mini baguettes from Peter Reinhart's Artisan Breads Every Day. These guys are pretty easy. Mix the ingredients, do a few stretch-and-folds, and then throw it in the fridge over night. Then in the morning pull it out of the fridge, wait a bit, chop into strips, and toss in the oven.
The one on the right turned out quite nicely. I used a dough scraper to chop the bulk dough into the individual loaves. This left a nice straight slit on each piece of dough. This is a super high hydration dough, so scoring with a knife or lame is quite challenging (i.e., almost impossible). I baked these loaves slit up and they opened up nicely, as if they had been scored! I tried to score another loaf in the traditional baguette style, but it really didn't work very well. (I ate it before I took the photos...)
They taste great! The crumb is quite dense, as you'd expect for a 100% whole wheat loaf, but not gummy (which is challenging to get around in whole wheat breads). I ate the loaf not photographed here for lunch with gorgonzola cheese and some pickled beets.
Next up: Miche Pointe-a-Calliere from Jeffrey Hamelman's Bread. I've tried to bake the Vermont Sourdough--what seems to be the most popular formula from this book--a couple of times without success. (I just can't get it to rise. I think there are two problems, it's fairly cool in our apartment about 70F, which is well below the recommended 76F, and I was using all purpose flour instead of bread flour, which I've had good results with in the past, but perhaps this formula can't handle that substitution. I'll try it again soon.) So I decided to try something different. Hannah got me some red fife flour at a farmer's market last week. Based on Hannah's description of the vendor's description of the flour--and what it looks like--it appears to be high extraction flour, so I thought I'd try the Miche Pointe-a-Calliere.
I halved the formula because I didn't want to bake an almost 4lb loaf since it's just me eating it. I also took one shortcut: I used a 100% hydration levain, instead of the suggested 60% hydration, because that's what I had on hand. (I should have thought ahead by about 6 hours, oh well.) To compensate for the cooler temperature in our apartment I slightly extended the bulk fermentation, and extended the proofing by about an hour. (And it still might have been a bit under-proofed.) I still baked it for the recommended hour even though it was half the size of the standard size (a bold bake!) and it seems like that was a good call.
It's still cooling...
First up, whole wheat pain a l'ancienne mini baguettes from Peter Reinhart's Artisan Breads Every Day. These guys are pretty easy. Mix the ingredients, do a few stretch-and-folds, and then throw it in the fridge over night. Then in the morning pull it out of the fridge, wait a bit, chop into strips, and toss in the oven.
The one on the right turned out quite nicely. I used a dough scraper to chop the bulk dough into the individual loaves. This left a nice straight slit on each piece of dough. This is a super high hydration dough, so scoring with a knife or lame is quite challenging (i.e., almost impossible). I baked these loaves slit up and they opened up nicely, as if they had been scored! I tried to score another loaf in the traditional baguette style, but it really didn't work very well. (I ate it before I took the photos...)
They taste great! The crumb is quite dense, as you'd expect for a 100% whole wheat loaf, but not gummy (which is challenging to get around in whole wheat breads). I ate the loaf not photographed here for lunch with gorgonzola cheese and some pickled beets.
Next up: Miche Pointe-a-Calliere from Jeffrey Hamelman's Bread. I've tried to bake the Vermont Sourdough--what seems to be the most popular formula from this book--a couple of times without success. (I just can't get it to rise. I think there are two problems, it's fairly cool in our apartment about 70F, which is well below the recommended 76F, and I was using all purpose flour instead of bread flour, which I've had good results with in the past, but perhaps this formula can't handle that substitution. I'll try it again soon.) So I decided to try something different. Hannah got me some red fife flour at a farmer's market last week. Based on Hannah's description of the vendor's description of the flour--and what it looks like--it appears to be high extraction flour, so I thought I'd try the Miche Pointe-a-Calliere.
I halved the formula because I didn't want to bake an almost 4lb loaf since it's just me eating it. I also took one shortcut: I used a 100% hydration levain, instead of the suggested 60% hydration, because that's what I had on hand. (I should have thought ahead by about 6 hours, oh well.) To compensate for the cooler temperature in our apartment I slightly extended the bulk fermentation, and extended the proofing by about an hour. (And it still might have been a bit under-proofed.) I still baked it for the recommended hour even though it was half the size of the standard size (a bold bake!) and it seems like that was a good call.
It's still cooling...
Saturday, January 16, 2010
I've been baking not blogging!
I got a couple of books for Christmas: PR's Artisan Breads Every Day and Jeffrey Hamelman's Bread. Both are great books, but I'm especially excited about the low-knead sour dough formulas in Hamelman's book.
I made Hamelman's straight dough French bread. It had terrific flavour (remarkably so for a straight dough) and looks pretty good too!
I made Hamelman's straight dough French bread. It had terrific flavour (remarkably so for a straight dough) and looks pretty good too!
Sunday, November 29, 2009
Stretch and fold and a bit of rye
I've heard about 'stretch and fold', a method which allows you to develop dough without having to knead it. I came across a tutorial on it and decided to give it a shot.
I made PR's BBA basic sourdough, straight from (whole wheat) starter/"barm" (no firm starter) using mostly white flour and a bit of rye. I leant my scale to a friend, so I was working by volume; consequently I'm not really sure what the hydration was, but I think it was a bit on the high side.
Stretch and fold is definitely way less work than kneading! Unfortunately, I don't think the three stretch and folds mixed the dough well enough. You can still see some streaks in the crumb where the starter isn't fully incorporated with the flours. I also think it's a bit under-baked. But whatever. It tastes pretty good and I really like the addition of the rye!
I made PR's BBA basic sourdough, straight from (whole wheat) starter/"barm" (no firm starter) using mostly white flour and a bit of rye. I leant my scale to a friend, so I was working by volume; consequently I'm not really sure what the hydration was, but I think it was a bit on the high side.
Stretch and fold is definitely way less work than kneading! Unfortunately, I don't think the three stretch and folds mixed the dough well enough. You can still see some streaks in the crumb where the starter isn't fully incorporated with the flours. I also think it's a bit under-baked. But whatever. It tastes pretty good and I really like the addition of the rye!
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Potato, cheddar, and chives
Today I tried the potato, cheddar, and chives bread from PR's BBA. I was a bit unsure about some parts of this recipe. The potatoes were supposed to be chopped coarsely, which made for a very odd kneading experience as the bits of potato sometimes got squeezed out of the dough... Also, I only used about 1/4 to 1/3 of the recommended amount of chives, because the recipe seemed to be calling for too many.
The loaves came out bigger than I expected. So big in fact, that they didn't fit on my baking stone! So the ends of one of the loaves were falling off the edge of the stone. (You can kind of see the problem in the loaf on the left; it droops down and is burnt on the end. I think I'll cut those bits off...)
The loaves came out bigger than I expected. So big in fact, that they didn't fit on my baking stone! So the ends of one of the loaves were falling off the edge of the stone. (You can kind of see the problem in the loaf on the left; it droops down and is burnt on the end. I think I'll cut those bits off...)
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Thanksgiving bread
I made a big loaf of bread for Thanksgiving. It's my typical sourdough loaf: a lean dough with in this case a mix of sifted whole wheat and white flour. This is by far my biggest loaf, at about three pounds of dough. I think it was a bit too big for my banneton (the dough was cresting well above the top of the banneton while proofing).
S. demonstrated that she is in fact white by purchasing some ornamental gourds. We demonstrated we're white by having dinner with a brown girl.
The bread got lots of oohs and ahhs but not much of it got eaten because sooooooomebody made a turkey...
S. demonstrated that she is in fact white by purchasing some ornamental gourds. We demonstrated we're white by having dinner with a brown girl.
The bread got lots of oohs and ahhs but not much of it got eaten because sooooooomebody made a turkey...
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Banneton!
Hannah got me a banneton for my birthday!
It's 9 inches, which is supposed to be appropriate for a 1-2 pound loaf.
I tried it out tonight. The bread is nothing special. It's kind of PR's BBA French bread, without the pre-ferment, but with some whole wheat flour, and with some adjustments to the salt and yeast that might not have been the best idea. Whatever. It's a reasonable mixture of flour, salt, yeast, and water.
I'm really pleased with the look of this loaf. The ridges of the banneton came through nicely. And my scoring opened up well. I haven't baked a hearth bread with commercial yeast in ages; it really seems to give a dough that's so much easier to work with, which is I think why the scoring is better.
Hannah also got me a dough scraper, which is super useful. She's the best!
It's 9 inches, which is supposed to be appropriate for a 1-2 pound loaf.
I tried it out tonight. The bread is nothing special. It's kind of PR's BBA French bread, without the pre-ferment, but with some whole wheat flour, and with some adjustments to the salt and yeast that might not have been the best idea. Whatever. It's a reasonable mixture of flour, salt, yeast, and water.
I'm really pleased with the look of this loaf. The ridges of the banneton came through nicely. And my scoring opened up well. I haven't baked a hearth bread with commercial yeast in ages; it really seems to give a dough that's so much easier to work with, which is I think why the scoring is better.
Hannah also got me a dough scraper, which is super useful. She's the best!
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